You of course know this already
I’m having this conversation with a guy who just recently moved into my neighbors’ rental across the street. He swings by in his monogrammed bath robe, a gentlemanly pipe jutting out his mouth, and I’m thinking, Shit, maybe this is how Nigerian dudes say hello the second time. The first was in the dark from across the street, under the rain and rather brief: welcome to the neighborhood, how long are you around for, how old is your boy, sorry for the fresh divorce, Bro, but it gets better I promise, great meeting ya, have a good night kinda stuff.
As far as I could tell, he’d had a few women over who I think were escorts. They were dressed for it, their visits were brief–point here is I wasn’t terribly alarmed by a Nigerian dude showing up at my door in his bathrobe. And even if he did swing that way part time, I’ve never had an issue setting that boundary and having that boundary be understood crystal clear. Travis my gay-as-they-come manscaper who’d hop at the chance knows how far down to peel my jeans when he’s trimming back my back and glory trail. I don’t have to say a word, he just knows.
My new homie’s a couple tequila shots in. I’m drinking OJ because, well, there’s a guy in a bathrobe I hardly know in my kitchen drinking my tequila and in more pain than me at the moment. At one point, it just makes sense the way the conversation is going for me to offer something I actually put down in my online dating profile. It’s practically verbatim, too: “Bro there’s three things I love most. My son. Jesus. And pleather and heels. And in pretty much that order.”
He and I stay on point a few minutes or more. “Do you know who Jesus spent most of his time with?” he asks.
Pleather and heels. Hookers. It’s not a complete stretch, but it’s not exactly what I had in mind when I put pleather and heels on my profile. My point, really, was that I do like my dates to show up. And yeah, that pleather and heels are my Achilles.
“Prostitutes?” I say.
“Prostitutes.”
Hmm, really?
I’m not so sure. I mean, I know there’s the parable of Jesus and a prostitute. Tax collector too for that matter. But most of the time?
Most of Your time?
This kinda opens the floor up to two diverse but not divergent topics, I don’t think: my faith and my thing for pleather and heels.
As for the first, hardly anyone ever asks about it and I’m not one to usually volunteer it, except here of course where all kinds of thoughts and opinions get volunteered under the umbrella category of things men carry. My faith. It’s something that I carry with me. Something even once in a while that I, same guy who obsesses over such things as pleather and heels, gets defensive about. A post on FB preaching the virtues of atheism right at Christmas time, let’s say, by of course taking a pop shit at Christianity. Funny it’s never Islam or Buddhism these atheists train their cross hairs on, which, is it even atheism anymore when all your bile is directed at one, unassuming carpenter?
Being the asshole that I sometimes am, who doesn’t quite get that you’re only supposed to positively affirm “friends'” posts and not contradict or challenge them, I do anyway. I do less as an instigator and more as someone who carries his faith around with him because it’s important to him. Dear. Personal. Indispensable. In response to any who offers their unsolicited proselytizing to the contrary, I hit back. Not all the time. Most of the time, I really don’t give a shit about what happens to the souls of non-believers when their time’s up. I don’t pray for them or their transformation. Pastors at my church will get as close as to saying in the petitions at Sunday service let us pray for those who are “asleep,” which I don’t take to mean atheists. As far as I can tell from this, the Vatican doesn’t give a shit about atheists either. Besides, I’ve–we’ve–too much other shit to think and pray about. It’s just when I’m feeling defensive is all, which I suppose is like saying when I’m feeling a little weak. That’s when I want to crash a thread on FB. Not in any grand, crusade-like way to change hearts and minds, either. The mind of the atheist I’ve come to realize is as rigid as the Bible thumper who’s way off in the sticks somewhere. It’s as hard as my junk is when it’s around pleather and heels. I know, right?
Let’s call my new friend O. He’s in the middle of a divorce. He doesn’t want the divorce, but his wife does. He has a fifteen year old boy who balls like mine does for his high school basketball team. I’m dealing with my own shit, which entails mostly just trying to ignore the fact that 34 years ago on Christmas Eve I buried my mother and it still feels like 34 minutes ago this time of year. It’s work putting on the happy face. What I wouldn’t do for her French toast, her take on the world today, her take on how I’m doing, for the chance to just sit back and watch her teach her grandson some French. Anything.
So O and I pain together, me a little more quietly. It’s in the context of women and relationships when I tell him how long I’ve been divorced, how it went down, and how it, like, sucked all of the oxygen out of the room to where I couldn’t breathe sometimes.
“It got better, though, Bro and I’m not sure it’d have been any better had we stayed together. I said A, fuck sake she heard B like every time”.
We ham it up a little. I start to poke fun of online dating. “Bro, women don’t know how to fuckin’ dress in this town. I’ve literally had them show up at dates looking like they just got done dropping their groceries off and hustled out the door.”
Which means they sure as hell don’t wear pleather and heels to even a comedy night, specifically after I, in fully erect transparency, say it’s one of my Achilles, if “fully erect transparency” means spelling it out clearly on my profile.
There’s that pregnant pause in our conversation. No telling what’s going on in O’s head. It’s about the time when I’m picturing Sunday mass with my person who’s dressed in last night’s pleather and heels.
Which is probably a little inappropriate by church standards, but there we are, holding hands, praying, kneeling in full surrender before You. Heck, it’s wish season, why not? Anyway, happy belated birthday
Things Men Carry 